Meaning & readings
green
On’yomi リョク、ロク
Kun’yomi みどり
Origin
The character 緑 combines the "thread" or "fiber" radical on the left, which marks this as a word related to textiles or threads, with a sound component on the right that hints at the pronunciation. The connection to green likely comes from the natural dyes used to color thread and cloth, particularly plant-based greens that were extracted from leaves and plants. Over time, the character came to represent the color green itself rather than just green-dyed thread. The fiber radical was retained as a classifier even after the meaning broadened to describe the color more generally.
Components
- 糸
- 彔
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 14
- Kangxi radical
- 120
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1180 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+07DD1